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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIs Donald Trump a liar? Maybe not -- and that's when it really gets scary
Our president says blatantly false things all day long. For him, they all serve a large and terrible truth
ANDREW O'HEHIR
JUNE 23, 2018 4:00PM (UTC)
There was and is no law requiring the children of undocumented immigrants to be taken away from their parents at the border. There is no crime wave caused by immigrants in Germany. (That nations historically low crime rate has fallen recently, and as in the United States immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens.) There was no measurable number of illegal votes cast in the 2016 election. Donald Trumps inauguration did not draw the largest crowds in history, and in his first year he did not sign more legislation than any other president. (Indeed, he ranked last among post-World War II presidents.)
Do you want me to go on? I definitely dont. But how are we to categorize Trump as an unquenchable fount of untruth, who by the Washington Posts count passed 3,000 false or misleading statements as president more than a month ago? Is he a liar, a bullshitter, a gaslighter, a prevaricator, an ignoramus or a delusional sociopath whose relationship to the world of observable reality and established fact is at best transactional? I see two viable answers to this question:
1. Its the wrong question.
2. Yes.
The second answer is correct because Trump uses all those tactics and more, sometimes in ways that seem calculated and sometimes on what looks like pure instinct. Clear back to his first intervention in what could loosely be called politics, when he was a New York tabloid celebrity who took out full-page ads in four daily newspapers calling for the execution of the five young men accused in the Central Park jogger case of 1989, Trump has displayed little or no concern for the truth.
In fairness, Trump had no way of knowing that the Central Park Five, who spent years in prison for that horrific rape, would later be proven innocent. Everyone else thought they were guilty too. If their conviction was the most infamous miscarriage of justice produced by the overlapping racial panic and crime panic of that era, it certainly wasnt the only one. (A remarkable data point, one the president likely views as fake news: There were roughly 2,000 murders a year in New York City between 1988 and 1993. Last year there were 290, the lowest recorded total since 1951.)
Whats far more important is that Trump didnt care whether those five young black and Latino men were guilty or innocent. The facts of the case were beside the point; their lives were beside the point. (Black lives quite literally did not matter.) Those men were no more than sinister extras in a psychodrama fueled by pure emotion fear, rage, bitterness, confusion in which questions of law or fact were irrelevant.
more
https://www.salon.com/2018/06/23/is-donald-trump-a-liar-maybe-not-and-thats-when-it-really-gets-scary/
randr
(12,417 posts)He only broadcasts the truth on the back of his wife.
Solly Mack
(90,787 posts)Doesn't make him any less a liar though.
Trump is emotionally damaged and needs lies to feel better about himself.
Doesn't make any less a liar though.
Trump simply doesn't care. He doesn't see people as people but as opportunities to advance himself.
He'll bully, lie, and even cajole to achieve this aim. People harmed along the way are a non-consideration to his ego driven needs.
Trump has crafted a bubble with him as its center - all things inside that bubble (must) revolve around him. Anything that threatens to burst that bubble is to be attacked and, if at all possible, destroyed.
Trump is not simply a liar - he is damaged and he inflicts that damage on others.
He feels better about those late night self-inflicted rages against his own person by lashing out at others.
He fears the things others say about him are true - that's why he lashes out with such bitter ramblings.
His bubble is being attacked. He needs that bubble.
And when he lashes out, he doesn't care who gets hurt as long as he feels better.